Our Services
Give us your challenges and we will return innovative and achievable solutions to ensure your compensation plans are aligned with your company and shareholder objectives.
Our global network of compensation experts provide our clients with a tailored experience, resulting in unique, attractive and robust plan design and implementation solutions. We have over 20 years of experience within the financial services industry, designing and implementing Cash, Equity and Carried Interest plans.
We are passionate about resolving the challenges that arise from deferred compensation administration!
Client Pain Points
Employee Understanding of Plans
A lack of Employee understanding or awareness of their own compensation plans has the potential to completely undermine the motivational and alignment goals of the plan.
Our team will work with you to modify the design of a plan or combination of plans and/or prepare an accompanying communication strategy to ensure employees understand their individual wealth creation opportunity and to further the firm’s strategic ambitions.
Plan Administration Difficulty
There is now a market demand for sophisticated plans with greater power of attraction and retention. Some complex plans can be time consuming to administer and risk prone. However, applying our experience to plan administration, EWM Global and EWM Global Advisory are highly experienced in resolving inefficiencies without influencing the overall alignment features of the plan.
Scarcity of Market Data
The nature of private equity is that compensation data is not widely shared. Our extensive experience with working with a multitude of different plans and firms has given us a unique insight in to the workings of a variety of different plan types.
Stakeholder Alignment
Plans can have adverse or unintended outcomes or incentivise the wrong behaviours. We offer design advice that incorporates the interest of all stakeholders with extensive modelling to demonstrate the outcomes under different circumstances, while ensuring that revenues match payouts in quantum and timing.
Our Services
Incentive Plan Design & Implementation
Our team of highly skilled Incentive & Reward plan experts leverage over 20 years of practical experience to support our clients in the design of new compensation plans, that motivate employees and align their interests with the strategic goals of the firm.
Services Provided
- Gather key criteria through discussions with firm stakeholders to determine business objectives, target audience, performance measures & targets and funding sources.
- We work with external advisors to accurately and efficiently optimise the tax outcomes of your plans and prepare all necessary documentation.
- Assist with gaining board approval of the plans.
- Develop high quality communication plan and documentation to ensure that the plan is well understood by participants.
- Ensure a smooth transition between plan design and the implementation of the plans, make sure that everyone involved with the plan knows what has to happen and when from a regulatory, tax and administration perspective.
Deliverables
- Summary T&C
- Final LPA or Plan Document
- Tax Advice Summary
- Registration of Incentive Entity
- Plan Process Documents
Full Compensation Review
Our team will perform a comprehensive review of all compensation components, historical compensation awards, deferral percentages, bonus derivation methods, bonus allocation methods & governance documents.
Services Provided
- Conduct a Needs Assessment: to understand the organization’s goals, priorities, and the specific compensation-related issues it is facing.
- Conduct a Job Analysis: to understand the roles, responsibilities, and requirements of different positions in the organization.
- Benchmarking: Benchmarking is the process of comparing the organization’s compensation programs to those of other similar organizations in the same industry or region.
- Review the Compensation Strategy: Based on the needs assessment, job analysis, and benchmarking, we will work with the organization’s leadership to verify that the compensation strategy that aligns with the organization’s goals and objectives.
- Evaluate Programs: Evaluate the effectiveness of the programs. This involves analyzing the impact of the programs on employee engagement, retention, and performance, and making adjustments as needed.
- Communication and Train: Review how the compensation programs are communicated to ensure that everyone understands the plans and how they work.
- Evaluate administration and governance of the plans from a fairness, accuracy, efficiency perspective
- Where appropriate we will also review the use of systems and technology
Deliverables
- A final report will include findings and recommendations supported by financial analysis delivered in a visually compelling format
Incentive Plan Benchmarking Analysis
Using a combination of publically available market data and EWM Global’s intellectual capital, our team will review the terms and conditions and distribution values of compensation programs relative to similar market plans.
Sample Carried Interest Plan Terms Reviewed Include:
- Performance Fee split between house and team
- Leaver provisions
- Reallocation
- Holdback
- Reserve
- Catchup
- Etc.
Deliverables
- A final report which will include all findings and recommendations supported by financial analysis
Bonus Pool Derivation & Allocation
Services Provided
Design a process to derive the firm and line of business bonus pools using a variety of inputs including:
- Common market metrics/ratios
- Individual compensation data
- Relative performance of lines of business
- Historical comparisons
Deliverables
- A summary report which uses key metrics to allow management to decide upon a final allocation of the bonus pool to each business unit
- Single page template to communicate bonus allocation decisions
Bespoke Advisory
Services Provided
Training and Development
- Provide training sessions on compensation role fundamentals including but not limited to: bonus allocation, benchmarking, plan administration, management reporting, communication
Year End Process Design
- Design an end to end process which adopts firm compensation philosophy, governance and security police is to ensure a smooth and efficient process
Ecosystem Analysis
- Review of existing systems and related processes in order to identify efficiency optimisation and risk mitigation opportunities
Deliverables
- Bespoke deliverables based on defined scope